CHINA, along with India and Brazil, will be one of the most important players in future international climate change negotiations. It accounts for nearly 15 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, making it second only to the United States. Experts say it is likely to be the largest emitter in about 20 years. Yet, as a developing country, it is not required to limit its emissions under the internationally agreed Kyoto Protocol.

Experts agree that climate change will affect China, and China will affect climate change. This spotlight provides relevant articles, background reading, and links on the issues at hand.

To kick it off, they've included an excellent overview of the energy sector and climate change from a director at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

By my calculations China accounted for 19.3% of global fossil fuel CO2 emmissions last year, compared to 22.6% for the US. If you chuch in Hong Kong and Taiwan that goes up to 20.6%. Reasonable estimates for energy demand (another 400 million tons of coal, 70 million more tons of oil) suggest this will rise to about 22% in 2006, with over 23% for Greater China.

Posted by: stephen on 28 Jun 05

The chinese economy does not have the softly softly approach to energy consumption which in my view is leading to overdevelopment in areas where the economy is not so sustainable .I do not think the chinese model is the elusuve third way at all , it's just growth in a rushed manner much like bypassing car suspension design( macpherson struts or double wishbones) and developing electronics to tweak a car's handing and ride based on a leaf spring setup with air suspension. If the electronics goes bust , there won't be any manual temporary fix available which would be catastophic in the case of 2 billion people .Does China have any development models of biodiesels(brazil) or solar cells(japan) or indeed any other ingenious models in case the world runs out of oil and coal?. We should all go back to the drawing board and develop more naturally and only by this way will we preserve our cultures, identity and of course our ecology for the generations to come because we will all have the knowledge and the resourses to switch to that manual temporary adjustments in times of economic busts or unsustainability . Thanks